Guild Wars 2

Has anyone done a DPS comparison between the two?  Simple tests i did on target dummies failed to show any significant difference.

How did you not find the swordsman better on dummies? He does a ton of damage to structures.

I tested all the phants a few weeks a ago and the swordsman was the clear winner for most fights. The warlock catches up only when you have a about 4-5 conditions on the target. So the swordsman is generally better for solo fights where you don’t have anyone helping you keep conditions up. Warlock is better for group fights and events.

BTW: The zerker is best for structures when you can get him to spin in place, with the warden a fair second.

Swordsman hits fast and hard. In WvW I run Staff + Sword/Sword, so I can get both out, but if I have to pick between the two, I want 3 Swordsman in small battles and 3 Warlocks in large battles.

I am often doing Staff / Sword+Sword as well. I summon whichever phantasm is up at the moment as they both fulfill the same role.

I agree with Esplen that I’ll summon warlock more often in large battles, but that’s because I am more prone to using my staff in large battles than sword+sword.

I’m in the “why choose” party because I use both.

Swordman has the best instant damage. It is extremely reliable in landing its hits, and it does hit hard. On the other hand, it does not change with phantasmal haste, and also won’t apply a lot of bleeding.

Warlocks are affected by phantasmal haste. They also attack slower, and hit weaker than swordsmen…with 0 conditions. Once you get even just 2 or 3 conditions, they will hit harder, and in a team with a necro, they will hit ridiculously hard.

Berserkers are really weird, and have the ability to hit for stupid things like 800, and I have also seen them hit for as high as 8k in a single spin. So kitten unreliable.

For my tests, i just just stood right at the golem and measured the time it took to die. For staff, i used Chaos Storm and then Warlock. For OH sword, just Swordsman.

Until recently, i used GS and staff. I have become rather attached to iZerker and the knockback on GS, so it was staff that i dropped. I like iZerker for hitting multiple targets.

Using chaos storm and then warlock is just silly. Chaos storm is on a 35 second cooldown, and if you actually want to compare dps, you can’t put in other things like that. This would be like saying you tested the swordsman damage, but you also blurred frenzied it.

All skills were off CD at the beginning of each test and the golem died so quickly that neither phantasm could be summoned twice. The idea behind Chaos Storm was to give the target some conditions to benefit Warlock.

lujate.5432:

All skills were off CD at the beginning of each test and the golem died so quickly that neither phantasm could be summoned twice. The idea behind Chaos Storm was to give the target some conditions to benefit Warlock.

I understand why you did it. Unfortunately understanding why doesn’t make your test any more valid.

Chaos storm deals damage, meaning the warlock had less hp to get through. If you had summoned phantasms twice, it would have only made your test even less reliable. Also with chaos storm, the conditions wouldn’t have lasted through the entire test, meaning the damage from the warlock would have fluctuated over time.

If you want to factor in condition boosting damage, you figure out the dps of the warlock, and then you increase it by 10% at a time. The way you did it simply gives absolutely no useful data. Additionally, time to kill an object really isn’t a useful measure either. You want to find flat non-crit dps, then apply crit chance and damage.

You’ll get no arguments from me that my tests were crude and the results unreliable.

Do not trait or equip with anything, and summon one of the phatasms against a golem and time its death. Do this multiple times (I mean like 100 times for each phantasm).

My results showed swordsman does more damage.

Now I wouldn’t use one or the other based solely on these results.

100 times for each phantasm? That’s a little over the top, lol.

It’s also still a needlessly imprecise metric.

Instead of doing something silly like timing ttk on an object, which inherently gives bad data, simply time the autoattacks of the phantasm itself.

Time between start of one attack to start of next divided by damage per attack = dps.

Once you have dps, you get to factor in crit chance and crit damage, bleeds from sharper images, damage scaling with the warlock, etc.

Fun fact: with that sort of test, you can also determine scaling with power and scaling with weapon attack damage for the skill.

But Pyro that requires maths and maths are hard I vote just go kill people and whichever one makes you feel more successful = better. Or that’s my ever so scientific method anyway lol

Isnt this just a power vs condition damage build. Because warlocks don’t without conditions.

Benjamin.8237:

Isnt this just a power vs condition damage build. Because warlocks don’t without conditions.

No, it isn’t. Warlocks scale with number of unique conditions on the target. That has absolutely nothing to do with condition damage.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Benjamin.8237:

Isnt this just a power vs condition damage build. Because warlocks don’t without conditions.

No, it isn’t. Warlocks scale with number of unique conditions on the target. That has absolutely nothing to do with condition damage.

Ah ok, thought they scaled by stack rather than unique conditions.

It’s been a while since I did my damage tests, but according to my spreadsheet the iWarlock will out DPS the iSwordsman at ~4.5 conditions normally or ~2.5 conditions if you run Phantasmal Haste. That’s not including the Sharper Images trait which adds a whole slew of additional variables.

It looks like these dps tests aren’t considering the cooldown of casting phantasms (correct me if I’m wrong), which would make Swordsman an even better choice since it would allow you to pump out more of them faster.

However, even if Swordsman is higher dps than wardens, I’m wondering if the Duelist may be better if you trait into Phantasmal Haste. According to the wiki, this talent doesn’t increase the attack speed of Swordsmen for some reason. If my math is correct, this should be the case:

Swordsman attacks every 3.2 seconds for 672 damage
672 damage / 3.2 seconds = 210 dps

Duelist, untraited for PH, attacks every 5.4 seconds for 1088 (8 × 136) damage
1088 damage / 5.4 seconds = 201.5 dps

Duelist, traited for PH, attacks every 4.4 seconds for 1088 (8 × 136) damage
1088 damage / 4.4 seconds = 247.3 dps

There’s a catch though: Swordsman and Duelist have equal cooldowns, but the talent to lower the Swordsman cooldown (Blade Training) is a tier 1 talent that is a staple of most mesmer builds. The corresponding Duelist talent (Duelist’s Discipline) is a tier 2 talent, but realistically will be taken in Tier 3 since Blade Training and Deceptive Evasion are so important.

Tl;dr – It looks like the Duelist phantasm can deal the highest dps, but it would require two talent investments (Phantasmal Haste from Illusions and Duelist’s Discipline from Dueling).

Those dps values aren’t quite right. The numbers in the wiki are the values for the skill recharge. Recharge is calculated from the end of 1 skill to the beginning of the next. For something like the swordsman, this isn’t a huge difference. For the warden and duelist which have significant casting/channeling times, this does make a difference. The duelist dps will be significantly lower than what you have there.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Those dps values aren’t quite right. The numbers in the wiki are the values for the skill recharge. Recharge is calculated from the end of 1 skill to the beginning of the next. For something like the swordsman, this isn’t a huge difference. For the warden and duelist which have significant casting/channeling times, this does make a difference. The duelist dps will be significantly lower than what you have there.

That makes my decision to go with sword offhand (for most situations at least) much easier!

I gotta admit, I’m glad the numbers work out this way since dual swords look so good, particularly with something like the Super Sword Skins.

Dahkeus.8243:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Those dps values aren’t quite right. The numbers in the wiki are the values for the skill recharge. Recharge is calculated from the end of 1 skill to the beginning of the next. For something like the swordsman, this isn’t a huge difference. For the warden and duelist which have significant casting/channeling times, this does make a difference. The duelist dps will be significantly lower than what you have there.

That makes my decision to go with sword offhand (for most situations at least) much easier!

I gotta admit, I’m glad the numbers work out this way since dual swords look so good, particularly with something like the Super Sword Skins.

Well, not to rain on your parade, but you have to consider a few more things too =P.

If you are taking at least 15 into dueling, duelists now can proc a bunch of bleeding stacks. This will add significantly to your overall dps even without any considerable condition damage, and so the bleeding from sharper images is where the duelist starts to pick up against the swordsman.

Pyroatheist.9031:

Dahkeus.8243:

Pyroatheist.9031:

Those dps values aren’t quite right. The numbers in the wiki are the values for the skill recharge. Recharge is calculated from the end of 1 skill to the beginning of the next. For something like the swordsman, this isn’t a huge difference. For the warden and duelist which have significant casting/channeling times, this does make a difference. The duelist dps will be significantly lower than what you have there.

That makes my decision to go with sword offhand (for most situations at least) much easier!

I gotta admit, I’m glad the numbers work out this way since dual swords look so good, particularly with something like the Super Sword Skins.

Well, not to rain on your parade, but you have to consider a few more things too =P.

If you are taking at least 15 into dueling, duelists now can proc a bunch of bleeding stacks. This will add significantly to your overall dps even without any considerable condition damage, and so the bleeding from sharper images is where the duelist starts to pick up against the swordsman.

Hmm, true. However, I run dungeons with my wife, who plays an Engineer using a condition build, so stacking up my lower damage bleeds may not be a good idea when it’s so easy to get bleed stack capped.

Good point though, I hadn’t thought of that.

Just for a bit more Engineer love. Has your wife compared the pistol auto-attack to the elixir gun autoattack?

Pistol auto:

• 0.5 sec
• Damage 118 (tooltip on gw2skills.net)
• Bleeding (2 sec)
• Radius: 120

• Elixir Gun auto:*
• 0.75 sec
• Damage: 130 (tooltip on gw2skills.net)
• Bleeding (4 sec)
• Weakness (1 sec)

Sebrent.3625:

Just for a bit more Engineer love. Has your wife compared the pistol auto-attack to the elixir gun autoattack?

Pistol auto:

• 0.5 sec
• Damage 118 (tooltip on gw2skills.net)
• Bleeding (2 sec)
• Radius: 120

• Elixir Gun auto:*
• 0.75 sec
• Damage: 130 (tooltip on gw2skills.net)
• Bleeding (4 sec)
• Weakness (1 sec)

I know she has both equipped, but I’m not sure when/how much she uses either since I don’t play eng myself. I think she attacks primarily with the grenade kit, but beyond that, I’m not sure.